1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to improvements in a monitoring system for a hospital bed. More particularly, the present bed pre exit patient monitor is temporally installed onto a wheel of a hospital bed. The load on the wheel is monitored to determine if a patient has moved to an edge of a bed before the patient exits the bed. The device has two arms that straddle a wheel of the bed and the arms move together to lift the wheel off of the ground to begin monitoring the load on the arms.
2. Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 1.98
The need to monitor the presence of a patient in a hospital bed in important to eliminate harm to a patient that is not capable of supporting their weight. In some cases the monitor is one or more switch(es) that identify when a patient has moved, rolled, or left a bed completely. Monitoring the bed for the absence of a patient does not stop a patient before they leave the bed. Other systems use load cells that are integrated into the wheel posts. These systems require that each hospital bed have the load cells thereby increasing the cost of the bed. Several products and patents have been issued that try to solve this problem. Exemplary examples of patents covering these products are disclosed herein.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,818,477 issued Dec. 31, 1957 to P. J. Gollhofer, U.S. Pat. No. 3,961,201 issued Jun. 1, 1976 to Morris Rosenthal and U.S. Pat. No. 4,539,560 issued Sep. 3, 1985 to David Fleck et al., disclose a bed patient monitoring system that uses mechanical switches to determine when a patient is not in a bed. While these patents disclose a system to determine if a patient is not in the bed the system only detects when the person is not present. It does not determine or discriminate when a person is on the edge of a bed before they get out of the bed. These patents also must be placed within the bed before the patient is placed into the bed.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,633,237 issued Dec. 20, 1986 to Kenneth Tacknott et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,844,488 issued Dec. 1, 1998 to Jeff Musick and U.S. Pat. No. 7,656,299 on Feb. 2, 2010 to Jason Gentry et al., disclose a bed monitoring system that uses an array of sensors that are placed under a patient to determine if a patient moves or is absent from a bed. These patents disclose a system to determine if a patient moves or is not in the bed the system does not detect when a person has moved to the edge of a bed before they attempt to leave the bed. These patents also must be placed within the bed before the patient is placed into the bed.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,823,278 issued Oct. 20, 1998 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,832,221 issued Nov. 3, 1998 both to Randy Geringer and U.S. Pat. No. 7,437,787 issued Oct. 21, 2008 to Alex Bhai disclose a bed monitoring or patient weighing system using strain gauges that are placed integrated into the legs of the bed. These patents require that the hospital bed is manufactured with the integrated strain gauges built into the legs or posts of the bed. The load sensors can't be removed from the bed and moved to other beds. The monitoring system must integrate the signal from sensors placed on numerous legs to determine what the patient is doing.
What is needed is a patient monitoring system that can be temporally placed onto a wheel of a hospital bed to monitor when a patient is preparing to leave a bed. The proposed application provided the solution with a device that can be slid onto a wheel and activated to slightly raise the wheel to determine if a patient is about to exit a bed.